Who knew that a Facebook status update simply stating "Where's my pancakes" would provide an alibi for a man charged in a robbery. Rodney Bradford, a 19-year-old resident of the Farragut Houses, was arrested on robbery charges, but was let go when the district attorney subpoenaed Facebook and verified that the status update had actually been typed from a computer located in his dad's house in Harlem at the time of the robbery. When the IP address info and timestamp was confirmed, the charges were dropped.

Of course, now every criminal will simply ask their friends or spouse to logon as them and post stuff to Facebook, Twitter, etc. at the time they commit some crime. Or the really crafty criminals will write sophisticated computer programs that automatically post stuff to their social networking accounts during the time they commit crimes.

Or you could simply commit the robbery, then a minute after your getaway just Remote Desktop to your home PC using a RDP client on your iPhone, Windows Mobile, etc. and then post stuff to your Facebook account, which will record the IP address of your home PC and not your mobile phone.

The article doesn't state where the robbery took place, but a source told me it was the International House of Pancakes (IHOP), which has notoriously bad service. Where's my pancakes, indeed!

Who knew that a Facebook status update simply stating \"Where's my pancakes\" would provide an alibi for a man charged in a robbery. Rodney Bradford, a 19-year-old resident of the Farragut Houses, was arrested on robbery charges, but was let go when the district attorney subpoenaed Facebook and verified that the status update had actually been typed from a computer located in his dad's house in Harlem at the time of the robbery. When the IP address info and timestamp was confirmed, the charges were dropped.

Of course, now every criminal will simply ask their friends or spouse to logon as them and post stuff to Facebook, Twitter, etc. at the time they commit some crime. Or the really crafty criminals will write sophisticated computer programs that automatically post stuff to their social networking accounts during the time they commit crimes.

Or you could simply commit the robbery, then a minute after your getaway just Remote Desktop to your home PC using a RDP client on your iPhone, Windows Mobile, etc. and then post stuff to your Facebook account, which will record the IP address of your home PC and not your mobile phone.

The article doesn't state where the robbery took place, but a source told me it was the International House of Pancakes (IHOP), which has notoriously bad service. Where's my pancakes, indeed!